The Windsor Star’s account includes a video of the young victim, who clearly understands the value of personal story-telling, holding a press conference to describe the beating he endured and some of the deeper meanings, however ironic.

I heard about this yesterday but only started to turn up the corner of the pages today – so familiar, so tiring, so traumatic it all is.

CBC.ca’s readers, if that’s not giving them too much credit, are weighing in with all sorts of rationalizations and side arguments, some of which question whether this was a gay-bashing worthy of hate crimes designation. It strikes me that some of their arguments, with just a hint of fundamentaCon oh-well-dem’s-da-breaks, fly in the face of the tough-on-crime positions (however half-baked) they feed in to cbc.ca and other comment vacuums 24/7.

All I can say is “Bravo!” to Chris Rabideau for courageously, and probably still in shock, coming forward to lay bare the ugly side of society where intolerance towards people’s sexuality is still acceptable in many quarters.